Exciting news from our first PTO meeting of the 2010-2011 school year

by Chris Koerwitz

August 05, 2010

Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) Minutes

August 3, 2010

1. Mr. Chris Koerwitz (assistant principal and district athletic director) opened the meeting with 3 topics.

2. E-Mail is now web-based, meaning that a person can access it from any computer with internet capability. Since the conversion this summer, all previous parent e-mail addresses have been ‘lost’ due to the fact that they did not convert from the previous e-mail server. Andrea DeRosa (one of the school secretaries) has to manually type all addresses (from registration form) into the new program. She has completed 5^th grade families. When 6^th – 8^th grade families’ addresses are completed, the daily announcements will be e-mailed to each family. This will also be used to inform parents of other important school and/or class information.

3. At the end of last school year, a Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS) survey was given to both parents and staff to evaluate the school year. One area for improvement, identified by staff, was the formal parenting teaching opportunities and parent involvement. This is one area that PTO would like to help. There was some discussion about how to get parents more involved. One such suggestion is to have a topic of interest to parents. Mr. Koerwitz is going to pursue a volunteer to teach a lesson with the new reading strategies that were implemented district-wide last year. Another topic of interest is internet safety and security. Teachers and parents are asked to send any other means of getting parents involved in their child’s learning to enhance their learning opportunities.

4. Also from Mr. Koerwitz:

Mr. Koerwitz said the behavior at the middle school was very good last year. The only thing that kept it from being great was a behavior slide in April and May. This year, they will be instituting "Lamkey Bucks". "Lamkey Bucks" will be distributed in April and May for good behavior and will be used to buy items from a "store". Mr. Koerwitz asked the PTO to seek out donations from individuals and businesses for items to stock the "store" with. More details about this program and needs will be discussed in an upcoming PTO meeting.
Also needed is playground equipment. Items such as playground balls, tether balls, etc. Per request of parent, Mr. Koerwitz will make a list of items wanted along with the number of those items. This list will be posted on the PTO page at the Riverton Middle School (RMS) website.

5. From Parents:

Web Information
- Riverton Community Unit School District #14 (CUSD) address is www.rivertonschools.org
  - From there, go to tab towards top of page marked MS. This link should take you there directly: http://www.rivertonschools.org/vnews/display.v/SEC/MS
  - On left side of this page, classes and other organizational information can be found by clicking on that tab
  - Family Access tab is also located on this page on the right side of page.
    - Grades are located in Family Access
    - Lunchroom Account information is also located there.
    - You will need a password to access this. If you have not set one up, please call the office at 629-6002.
- Recommendation for all parents to review teacher's WebPages. Many of these WebPages have information that would be useful to parents during the school year.
- Would like it to be more user-friendly – less clicks to get to information in grade information as well as PTO
- Need to keep updated
  - Some teachers still are working to get their e-mail and website up and running
  - Dates that reflect 2009 at ‘home’ page can and will be hidden as they are updated in the content area and teachers will put current date there.
- 8^th Grade assignments are all located under 8^th grade tab and not under individual teachers. 7^th Grade assignments were done that way last year, and Mr. Koerwitz will ask the 7^th grade team to do the same.
- 5^th and 6^th grade assignments are under teachers that teach that class which means parents can copy and paste the different assignments to a Word document or print off each teacher’s assignments and highlight the ones that pertain to their children.
- Once all e-mail addresses have been put into new program, daily announcements will be e-mailed to each parent that signed up on registration form for that service.
- Other pertinent information will also be emailed, one such item being PTO minutes. Another possibility is that email notices may be sent out when weekly assignments are posted.
Explanation of “Out of the Blue” (OOTB)
- - Incentive as part of PBIS program
  - Two kinds
    - Big
      - Involves the whole school
      - No major referral in order to participate
    - Small
      - Planned by grade level
      - Names are drawn from Hawk Up cards
      - No major or minor referrals to participate
      - Activities could be decorating, chalk drawing, etc.
  - Next “Out of the Blue”
    - August 12
    - Information about that can be found by going to MS home page and clicking on PBIS tab on left side of page.
  - Mr.Koerwitz will talk to teachers to see if there are opportunities for PTO to participate in some the OOTB activities.

6. Suggestions for topics that could be addressed at or in-between scheduled PTO meetings:

Reading Strategies
- Sample lesson
- Staff teaching parents like they would teach students
- Would like this done soon so parents can help children with homework as this was a new program introduced into the district last year and some parents are still unclear of how to help their children.
- Mr. Koerwitz will check with staff to see who would like to do this and Annette Heintzman (parent) will send out an e-mail to parents to see interest level.
Internet Safety and Security
Other topics are requested from parents

7. Parents request from teachers other topics to address; topics that would help both teacher, student, and parent aid the students in being successful. Also would like input from teachers on what they would like to see PTO do for them.

8. There will be a section on Middle School (MS) home page with information that “parents wished they had known at the beginning of the year". One such item is that 5^th grade is not involved in any athletic sports. Request that parents who have items they learned from other parents or from teachers later in the year submit these to Annette Heintzman so she can consolidate them and get them on the MS home page. Annette Heintzman is the ‘volunteer co-coordinator’ for PTO. She will take volunteer needs from teachers throughout the year and then e-mail parents for interest. If you have a specialty you’d like to share, you can e-mail that to Annette and she will contact teachers about it. Her e-mail address is: adamhsmom@sbcglobal.net